The usual alcohol policy tweeps from the 'public health' lobby have been quiet today - perhaps because they are on holiday - and so the task of muddying he water has fallen to Buzzfeed. Its article, by Tom Chivers, mentions the usual excuse that non-drinkers are all terribly ill because they used to be alcoholics. Although Chivers acknowledges that this study only looked at lifetime abstainers, he implies that most studies of this kind do not. In fact, most studies conducted in the last fifteen year have only looked at lifetime abstainers. The 'sick quitter' hypothesis is a thoroughly debunked zombie argument that should have been dropped long ago.

With the sick quitters put to one side, he takes the fall back position of suggesting that there is something else about teetotallers that makes them less healthy:

But people who've never drunk in their lives are fairly unusual, in Western society, as well. So there may be some other factor that we haven't thought of.

There are several problems with this line of argument.

Firstly, saying 'teetotallers are less healthy because, er, reasons' isn't much of an argument to begin with.

Secondly, if it is an argument, it is an argument against all epidemiology. Different groups are usually different in several ways. That is why epidemiologists adjust for confounding factors. Of confounding factors, Chivers says: 'You can try to avoid these problems, but you can never do it perfectly.' This is trivially true, but there is a hint of the Nirvana fallacy about it. Perfection is impossible in observational epidemiology. The question is not whether it is perfect, but whether it is good enough. In this study, the researchers took account of a wide range of factors, including physical activity, smoking, race, body weight and education. They also adjusted for the prevalence of various diseases. The association between teetotalism and death remained.

Thirdly, it is not at all clear that teetotalism correlates with unhealthy behaviour. On the contrary, it often correlates with healthy behaviour (whereas heavy drinking correlates with unhealthy behaviour).

Fourthly, teetotallers are not 'fairly unusual' in the United States. A third of Americans are teetotal. Forty per cent of the people in this study did not drink and 23 per cent of them had never drunk. By contrast, only 5 per cent were heavy drinkers. It is therefore heavy drinking that is fairly unusual, but Chivers doesn't fault the evidence on alcohol harm from heavy drinking on the basis that there might be something weird about heavy drinkers.

A few other points are worth mentioning because they have been generally absent from the news reports about this study:

Firstly, the authors found a reduction in risk for cancer mortality among light drinkers, and no increase in cancer mortality risk for moderate drinkers. So much for there being 'no safe level'.

Secondly, they found no increased risk of heart disease mortality among heavy drinkers (but a large reduction among the other drinkers).

Thirdly, moderate drinking was defined as up to 14 drinks per week for men and up to 7 drinks a week for women. A 'drink' is not a unit, however. In this study, a drink is 14 grams of alcohol whereas a British unit is 8 grams of alcohol. The male moderate drinkers were therefore consuming up to 24.5 units and the female moderate drinkers were consuming up to 12.25 units.

The Buzzfeed piece claims that the statistician David Spiegelhalter 'says [the study is] a vindication for the new, low-risk NHS guidelines'. It's hard to see how. The authors clearly define moderate drinking differently to the NHS and there was a reduction in mortality in the group that included men who drink much more than the 14 units now recommended by the government. (NB. the only change to the guidelines was the reduction in the male limit.)

Spiegelhalter (who was on the guidelines committee) is quoted as saying: 'Once you get above the NHS guidelines of 14 units a week, that's when risk starts taking off.' Nothing in this study supports that statement. Is he getting confused between a US 'drink' and a UK 'unit'?

Fourthly, the health outcomes for light drinkers and moderate drinkers were virtually identical across the board, so there is no evidence for the claim that is sometimes made about the benefits of drinking only existing for people who drink tiny amounts.

Tuesday, 8 August 2017

The British government's underhand manipulation of the food supply should be a major news story. So far it has been largely ignored so I was pleased to see Blair Spowart get to grips with it at Spectator Health today...

Don’t expect PHE to stop its interference when its targets are inevitably not met. It’s already tackling salt in much the same way as sugar. Next on their naughty list is saturated fat.
Because PHE needs perpetual public health crises to justify its
existence, it is always sure to find one – to the detriment of
consumers. This wide-ranging food reformulation programme is all
happening, moreover, without even the pretence of public consultation.

More needs to be done to show consumers
who’s really ripping them off. The first step is moving beyond our
kneejerk reaction to shrinkflation and related phenomena – ‘blame it on
Brexit’ – and looking more closely at the subtle but powerful impact of
our economically illiterate public health lobby.

The question we ask in this series of reports is simple and important: what would be the impact on government revenues and spending if the 'public health' lobby won the war on drinking, smoking and obesity? Campaigners often claim, or strongly imply, that costs would fall but this is based on an economic calculation that exaggerates and misrepresents costs while ignoring savings.

Written with Mark Tovey (author of Obesity and the Public Purse), Smoking and the Public Pursetakes a full account of the costs, savings and tax revenues associated with smoking and finds that the government would be spending £14.7 billion more per annum if nobody smoked.

In the absence of smoking, the government would spend an extra £9.8 billion annually in pension, healthcare and other benefit payments (less taxes forgone). Duty paid on tobacco products is £9.5 billion a year. In total, the gross financial benefit to the government from smoking therefore amounts to £19.3 billion. Subtracting the £4.6 billion of costs (above) produces an overall net benefit of £14.7 billion per annum.

The report also looks at the impact on the treasury if all three of the most discussed 'lifestyle factors' - obesity, alcohol and smoking - miraculously disappeared.

Alcohol and tobacco duty provide £10.7 billion and £9.5 billion to the government respectively, with an additional £4 billion of VAT charged on this duty. If, as expected, the forthcoming sugar levy raises £500 million per annum, the government will be in receipt of £24.7 billion of ‘sin tax’ revenue by 2018.

Taken together, the net benefit to the government from the three most hotly discussed ‘lifestyle factors’ - alcohol, obesity and smoking - is £22.8 billion.

Smoking and the Public Purse brings this series to an end. You can read all the relevant publications below. Nothing in them should be particularly controversial (see Death and Taxes for a review of the literature). It is obvious that a cost-benefit analysis requires benefits to be included alongside costs. Unfortunately, including benefits and savings doesn't suit single issue campaigners because it shrinks their estimates of the 'burden on taxpayers'. With the exception of obesity, which incurs a relatively small overall cost to the health service, doing the job properly turns a cost into a net saving.

I don't suppose this body of research will make much difference because it doesn't confirm what people want to believe (contrast that with the wafer-thin Policy Exchange document which has been cited hundreds of times in public debate), but I will keep banging this drum because it happens to be true.

Thursday, 3 August 2017

I was on the radio yesterday debating with some busybody from the NHS who wants to limit the number of takeaway shops in Britain's high streets. The feeble hook for this story was the news that the number of takeaway outlets in the country has increased by eight per cent in the last three years, according to a pearl-clutching Guardian analysis.

This would seem to reflect the resurgent economy and population growth but for the 'public health' lobby it is a crisis. Why? Because fast food causes obesity, dunnit?

But does it? Leaving aside the fact that takeaway food shops do not necessarily sell 'junk' or 'fast' food, the assumption that takeaways cause obesity has always been just that: an assumption.

What empirical basis does it have? A 2010 evidence review identified 12 studies looking at fast food outlet availability and obesity. Six found a positive association, five found no association and two found a negative association.

It also looked at six studies of fast food consumption and obesity. Three found an association, the other three didn't.

Our results suggest,
contrary to normative views, that away from home food expenditures negatively
affect BMI and that BMI is negatively related to the percentage of the food
budget spent away from home.

The study looked at people's 'exposure' to takeaway food in Cambridgeshire and claimed that people who were heavily 'exposed' were 80 per cent more likely to be obese. The study concludes with a call for 'policies designed to improve diets through restricting takeaway food availability' which is a bit of a red flag for activist-driven research. This response from a statistician (which the authors never addressed) is devastating. It reveals that the finding was entirely dependent on adjustments to the data.

After reading the interesting article by Burgoine et al. I
was at first irritated by the lack of a table to compare the
characteristics (as shown in Table 1) of participants grouped according
to quarters of take-away environment. Further, I missed a simple
presentation of outcome variables (mean take-away consumption, mean BMI,
percentage overweight and obese) grouped according to these same
quarters. Usually one would expect such tables in order to assess the
comparability of the groups with respect to possible confounders and for
a direct, unadjusted comparison of outcomes, respectively.

Then I discovered this information in Web table 3 of the online
appendix. Here, we see systematic differences between quarters with
respect to education, smoking and car ownership. I think the authors
should have presented these tables and drawn attention to these
differences in the main printed article, even if the multiple linear
regression models adjusted for the covariables concerned.

What surprised me even more in Web table 3 was the fact that mean
take-away consumption was slightly inversely correlated with combined
take-away availability, varying between 36.3 g/day in Q1 and 34.2 g/day
in Q4. This contrasts completely with the results of the multivariate
analysis (Fig. 1) in which a significant positive correlation between
take-away availability and consumption was obtained. Moreover, In Web
table 3 mean BMI is almost constant in all quarters of take-away
availability, contrasting with the significant positive correlation
between take-away availability and BMI derived from the multiple linear
model (Fig. 2). While I accept that the multivariate analysis adjusting
for potential confounders is the analysis of choice for such an
observational study, the complete lack of agreement with the simple
univariate analysis is worrying and should be presented and discussed.

A hint on the possible explanation for these inconsistencies is given
under ‘sensitivity analyses’. ‘In models that omitted supermarket
exposure as a covariate, the associations between combined take-away
food outlet exposure, consumption of take-away food and body mass index
were attenuated towards the null…’. These sensitivity results are given
in Web figures 5 and 6. The expression ‘attenuated towards the null’ is
an understatement: no association remains at all, in agreement with the
simple univariate comparison.

If you look at the supplementary data, you can see that he is correct. There is no difference in average weight between those who have the greatest exposure to takeaways (4) and those who have the least (1). Moreover, the people who had the easiest access to takeaway food ate less of it than those who had the least access.

Your faith in the authors' conclusion therefore depends on how much faith you have in their numerous adjustments to the data. To my mind, it is junk science, but whatever you think of it, it is simply untrue to claim that the people in this study who were most 'exposed' to takeaways were fatter than other groups.

This study revealed a very high frequency of fast food consumption among
the schoolchildren. Taste, quick access and peer influence were major
contributing factors. These schoolchildren are exposed to an obesogenic
environment, and it is not surprising that in this situation, many of
these children are already overweight and will likely become obese as
adults.

Notice how the authors beg the question. It is assumed that those who eat the most fast food will be most likely to be obese. They say that 'many of these children' are already overweight or obese but they do not say how many, nor do they compare obesity rates between those who eat a lot of it and those who do not.

You have to dig into the study to discover why they are so coy about this. It goes unmentioned in the text of the study, but we can see in Table 2 that there is an inverse relationship between frequency of takeaway consumption and body weight. The children who ate the most of it weighed the least and those who ate the least of it weighed the most.

This was clearly not what the authors were hoping to find so they ignored it and editorialised with a blatantly activist conclusion:

Clearly, actions need to be taken to either limit the ability of these
children to access fast food outlets or to change the foods they
purchased at these outlets (eg, less calorie dense, with more fruit and
vegetables, with less fat and salt) and to have a ban on the sale of
sweetened soft drinks at these outlets.

Wednesday, 2 August 2017

Tobacco control involves an endless procession of idiotic and illiberal policies which have obvious unintended consequences. Those consequences are easy to predict, but the campaigners dispute their existence when the policy is being debated. Shortly thereafter, the negative impact becomes clear to see and the campaigners get a goverment grant to prove the existence of the bleeding obvious, and demand further legislation to address the problem - a problem they alone have created.

Restaurant traders in Melbourne's south east are banning meals from
their alfresco dining menus in favour of allowing punters to light up a
cigarette.

On Monday, the state government of Victoria banned smoking in the outdoor dining areas of privatebusinesses as part of its vendetta against smokers. The article quotes the owner of a Greek restaurant who would like to stay in business if it's all the same to the government.

He said that while most traders wanted to comply with the laws,
some feared they would lose customers to other venues if they outlawed
smoking all together in the fiercely competitive strip.

Instead, its alfresco dining area has been morphed into coffee friendly, but meal-free, designated smoking zone.

Once the lunch rush hour hits, smokers are told to butt out.

"What
a lot of people don't understand is that taking a cigarette away from
an elderly Greek man is like taking away everything he's got," he said.
"They come down each morning... they could stay five or six hours. It's
their life, having a coffee, a cigarette, having some cake, socialising
with their friends... that's the way it's always been."

We saw the hospitality industry deal with a similar ban in much the same way in New South Wales two years ago:

Inevitably, the hateful fanatics who supported this legislation are appalled that people are following the letter of their stupid law rather than its hateful spirit. Within hours of the ban coming into effect, they were portraying deliberate exemptions as 'loopholes'.

He said traders were "opportunistically" designating spaces as "non-eating" during particular times of the day allowing smoking to legally
continue.

"It's a recipe for absolute chaos and disorder," Cr Lake said.

You can see from the photo he tweeted of people happily socialising just how much chaos and disorder have been created by people 'opportunistically' obeying the law, ie. none. The Age also provides a photo of the kind of miscreants Lake is talking about.

Chaos and disorder in Melbourne

He won't be happy until these people are banned from the premises altogether and the business is closed down. Even then, he won't really be happy because people like him never are.

Cr Lake said the mall was among the worst areas in Melbourne for passive smoke and it remained a critical public health issue.

People smoking outdoors has no impact on the health of others whatsoever. None. Some people might find it mildly irritating while they are eating, in which case they should go to a venue where people are not smoking. There is no justification for the government getting involved and it is laughable to describe it as a 'public health issue', let alone a 'critical' one.

He
said council was seeking urgent legal advice on whether it could enact
its own local laws to put a blanket ban on smoking in the area.

Of course he is. And, this being Australia where the concept of a 'fair go' does not exist for smokers, he will doubtless succeed.

UPDATE

This awful human being has now written a whole op-ed about the supposed 'loopholes' that allow a tiny sliver of choice.

Thursday, 27 July 2017

A study published in the BMJ today will have the usual anti-vaping fanatics howling at the moon. It found that vapers were much more likely to attempt to quit smoking than those who don't vape, and that they are 73 per cent more likely to succeed in quitting smoking when they do. It also finds a significant increase in smoking cessation in the USA that coincides with the rise of vaping.

Anti-vaping throwbacks will no doubt say that correlation does not equal causation, but the authors examine two possible alternative explanations for the decline in the smoking rate and find them wanting...

First, in 2009 there was an increase in federal tobacco tax. The national cigarette tax increased by 158%, resulting in an immediate reduction in cigarette uptake among US adolescents.
In our study we found a small but statistically significant increase in
quit attempts among US adults, from 39.9% in 2006-07 to 41.4% in
2010-11 (fig 2, top panel). However, the total cessation rate did not
change: 4.5% for both surveys (fig 2, bottom panel). Thus the effect of
the 2009 federal tax on quitting by adult smokers, if there was an
immediate one, was no longer detectable by 2010-11. This lack of change
in smoking cessation under such a dramatic tax increase accentuates the
difficulty in improving quit rates at the population level.

Second, since 2012 there have been annual, national media campaigns aimed at increasing quit rates among adult smokers.
The TIPS from Former Smokers campaign used evocative television spots
showing the serious health consequences of tobacco use. This campaign,
running from nine to 20 weeks in any given year, reached a large segment
of the smoking population. A national survey after the first round of
the campaign found that 78% of smokers saw at least one media spot. By 2015, there had been four rounds of the campaign. Surveys found a
statistically significant increase in quit attempts, and the cessation
rate of those who made a quit attempt was estimated to be between 5.7%
and 6.1%.

In
the present study we found statistically significant increases in both
quit attempt and cessation rates from 2010-11 to 2014-15. This period
coincided with the TIPS campaign and the dramatic increase in
e-cigarette use.

Could
TIPS alone explain the increase? Given the reach of the first TIPS
campaign, after four rounds it was expected to reach most US smokers by
2014-15.
However, the majority of smokers did not appear to change their
quitting behavior: smokers who did not use e-cigarettes were the
majority (77%) in 2014-15. Neither their attempt rate nor the annual
cessation rate was statistically different from that of all smokers in
2010-11 (fig 1). It was e-cigarette users in 2014-15 who showed a
dramatically higher quit attempt rate and a higher cessation rate.

The authors caution against attributing all of the difference in cessation rates to vaping because it is possible that those who are most committed to quitting are more likely to use e-cigarettes. However, this study is hardly the first to find a significantly higher rate of quitting among vapers and randomised controlled trials have found the same thing. Indeed, the quit rate among vapers in thisstudy is more modest than has been found in most other studies, but it's published in the BMJ so is getting more attention.

The authors are from California so it is brave of them to publish a study that not only shows that vaping works but that the favoured policies of the tobacco control cabal don't. As a final dig in the ribs they conclude their study by saying:

We found that e-cigarette use was associated with an increased smoking
cessation rate at the level of subgroup analysis and at the overall
population level. It is remarkable, considering that this is the kind of
data pattern that has been predicted but not observed at the population
level for cessation medication, such as nicotine replacement therapy
and varenicline.

Tuesday, 25 July 2017

I've written a piece for Cap-X about the bollocks above, which was released on the day that the Supreme Court took a look at minimum pricing.

In the article I mention the fact that the job of evaluating minimum pricing has been given to the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group, which has been pushing the policy for the best part of a decade (see job spec below).

It's difficult to put into words quite how scandalous this is. Even if you thought that the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group's work was of high quality (which it isn't) and that they were impartial (which they aren't), the fact is that they have made their name producing research that purports to show that minimum pricing will be a roaring success. This gives them an inevitable and massive conflict of interest when it comes to evaluating it.

If they don't show that minimum pricing works, it will be an admission that their numerous reports - for which they have been amply remunerated by taxpayers - have been garbage. This would be enough to tempt a saint to massage the figures (and the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group are not saints). They are the last people you would turn to for an independent review. The fact that they have given the job is proof that the 'public health' racket is shamelessly and incorrigibly corrupt.

I'll bet you a pig to the pork scratching that when their evaluation is published in a few years' time, it concludes that minimum pricing has saved lives and worked even better than predicted, but that the unit price needs to be increased.

Monday, 24 July 2017

After high-profile cases with the likes of newly gappy Toblerones, the UK stats office says that over 2,500 products were cut in size between January 2012 and June 2017, far outweighing the number of items that were boosted. The trend is most pronounced in sugary treats, where changing pack sizes have contributed 1.22 percentage points to their rate of inflation since 2012, the ONS says.

Manufacturers tend to blame price increases on higher costs for raw materials, but the ONS points out that sugar prices are around the lowest since records began in 1991, while cocoa prices have also tanked.

The FT also notes that the ONS discounts Brexit as the reason because:

'Our analysis doesn’t show a noticeable change following the referendum that would point towards a Brexit effect. Furthermore, others had been observing these shrinking pack sizes long before the EU referendum, and several manufacturers have denied that this is a major factor.'

The bottom line is that most people prefer the taste of sugar to that of
artificial sweeteners, and many of the products in the firing line are
inherently sweet. Products such as chocolate, confectionery and jam are
not going to be magically reformulated with sweeteners. There is a
dawning realisation at Public Health England that reducing portion sizes or having a calorie cap
(which amount to much the same thing) are the only viable options.

While the achievement of the 20% reduction by 2020 is the overall focus of the
programme, smaller gradual reductions can provide a useful contribution to reducing
sugar and calorie consumption, and ultimately towards achieving the overall goal. This
applies particularly in those products where sugar reduction per 100g can be more
difficult, for example, in chocolate confectionery. Where this is the case, businesses are
expected to employ additional mechanisms, such as reducing portion size, to achieve
the total 20% reduction.

Saturday, 22 July 2017

You've probably read about the five year old lemonade criminal of Tower Hamlets. She was selling lemonade outside her house on a sunny day, as children do, when four 'enforcement officers' charged her with trading without a licence and issued a £150 fine.

Tower Hamlets council have since cancelled the fine and apologised to the family, saying:

"We are very sorry that this has happened. We expect our enforcement officers to show common sense and to use their powers sensibly. This clearly did not happen."

The incident has been almost universally recognised as an extreme example of jobsworths mindlessly applying the letter of the law when they could use their discretion.

You may call me a monster – but I'm glad that girl's lemonade stall got shut down

This article comes from the keyboard of one Duncan Hothersall who is the editor of Labour Hame (sic). Mr Hothersall seems to be a real person and his article does not appear to be a spoof. His argument is, in essence, that rulez is rulez and if you don't like them you should move to Somalia.

There are half a million cases of food poisoning each year in the UK, and one of the reasons we have stringent controls on who can sell food and drink, especially in unsealed containers, is to try to cut those figures down. And street stalls in general are regulated because we have a system of taxation, rights and responsibilities in this country which underpins our functioning society. Regulation is a social and economic good.

How many cases of food poisoning are caused by juvenile lemonade vendors - or sugary drinks in general - Mr Hothersall omits to mention. How much VAT is lost to the treasury as a result of five year old entrepreneurs is also left to our imagination, but we can safely assume that these numbers are very small indeed.

Nevertheless, it is not disputed that this infant was breaking the law. The question is whether the law is right and whether it was appropriately applied in this instance. The sweeping claim that 'regulation is a social and economic good' implies that a regulation must be good because it is a regulation. Presumably, then, Hothersall can think of no law that should be amended, repealed or applied with discretion.

It’s also pretty unfair to criticise the hard-working public servants
who acted in this case for doing the job they are no doubt underpaid to
do. For the council to say “we expect our enforcement officers to show
common sense” as they cancelled the fine is all very well, but I’m
willing to bet they are given precious little leeway in their training
when it comes to who gets fined and who doesn’t.

On what basis are we to assume that the enforcers are 'hard-working' and 'underpaid'? They may be, but we have no way of knowing. We do not even know who they are. What is an 'enforcement officer' anyway? As Josie Appleton says in her fantastic book Officious, the law used to be enforced by the police and we knew who they were. Today, we have an army of wardens, support officers, compliance officers and co-ordinators with varying degrees of authority (or none) whose only unifying feature is a high-vis jacket.

Whether you regard these people as underpaid depends on what value you think they bring to society, but there can be no assumption that they are all hard-working. Clearly they were not sleeping on the job in this instance, but if it took four of them to close down a child's lemonade stand we might question whether they were working at maximum efficiency.

For Hothersall, however, we do not need to know anything about the individuals. They work in the public sector and therefore must be hard-working and underpaid. It is unthinkable that anyone who works for the council could be paid too much.

“But these are decent folk being persecuted by a nanny state,” I hear
you cry. And I stand impervious, I’m afraid. Because I’ve heard that
line a lot recently and it’s beginning to grate.

I have not heard anybody claim that this is an example of the nanny state. The nanny state is about protecting adults from themselves. This case is not about that. There was no paternalistic intent in either the law or the application of the law. If it requires a label, it is the busybody state.

If Mr Hothersall has been hearing a lot of complaints about the nanny state recently, it is because there is a sense that the state has become ever more intrusive. The complaint is not wrong just because it is 'beginning to grate' on him. A more enquiring mind might ask whether his fellow citizens have a point, but instead he changes the subject...

It’s the same argument used against speed cameras and parking fines.

No, it isn't. These are not nanny state issues either and the complaint that Hothersall identifies (which is essentially 'bloody nanny state') is not actually an argument. If it were, he would have to find a counter-argument and that would be too much effort. Much easier to create a false equivalence between a motorist who moans about being fined and a five year old being punished for selling lemonade.

How often have you heard those caught out proclaim themselves as
“law-abiding citizens” and bemoan the infringement of their freedom?

Laws do infringe on freedom and they are intended to do so. The question is whether the infringement is justified by the wider benefits to others. A motorist might legitimately complain that a speed limit of, say, 20mph is unreasonable and is therefore an unnecessary infringement on freedom.

Just as Hothersallbelieves that the salaries of council workers can never be too high, he may also believe that speed limits can never be too low. Who knows what he thinks? It is possible that he gives these questions no thought at all since, despite writing for a political website, he seems to think that the nature of laws is not a matter for public comment. Regulation is good per se and every law in the land is perfect.

I
have news for you: if you break the speed limit, or park illegally, or
indeed break health and safety or trading regulations, you are not a
law-abiding citizen. You’re actually the one who’s in the wrong.

If you break the law, you are not a law-abiding citizen by definition. That is undeniable. But whether you are in the wrong depends on whether the law is right. What if the law is an ass? What if agents of the state do not 'use their powers sensibly', as Tower Hamlets council put it?

Even if Hothersall cannot think of any laws he would like to change in Britain today, surely he can think of historical examples of good people breaking bad laws? Surely he can think of instances in which the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of the law, has been applied, thereby causing harm?

Most people - including the council - think that that is what happened in this case. Hothersall's insistence that we unquestioningly follow orders when the consequences are so farcically at odds with the intentions of the lawmakers and deviate so far from public opinion is slightly sinister.

A culture of entitlement, and a belief that rules are for other people but not us, is a disease gripping middle Britain.

A culture of entitlement, he says. This is a five year old girl he's talking about. As they say on Merseyside, Mr Hothersall, give your head a wobble.

Dalli's defence is that he is the victim of an inexplicable conspiracy conjured up by José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission, OLAF, the tobacco industry and numerous others. The gist of the plot is that Barroso didn't want Dalli to regulate cigarettes and so conspired to replace him with a more pro-tobacco commissioner who would water down the Tobacco Products Directive (nb. Dalli's replacement is not remotely pro-tobacco and the TPD was not watered down).

On Monday night, BBC4 showed a documentary about Dalli which is well worth watching. The title and blurb for the programme (see above) are rather misleading. The 'mystery' involved smokeless tobacco, not cigarettes, and Dalli was not accused of being 'in the pocket of "big tobacco"', he was accused of trying to get in the pocket of a small tobacco company (and was reported to the authorities by the company).

I was expecting a pro-Dalli whitewash and the first 20 minutes seemed to confirm my fears. (Spoiler alert.) At first, the two Danish journalists are taken in by Dalli's protestations of innocence and are keen to blow the cover on a Big Tobacco conspiracy. But as they dig a little deeper and get to know more about the man, things take a turn.

Dalli shows them e-mails from a mystery correspondent named Maria who claims to have a dossier proving that Barroso took a bribe from the tobacco industry and put it in a Norwegian bank account. But this evidence never surfaces and we find that Maria does not exist.

They then go to Bahamas and find out about a con artist friend of Dalli's known as 'Ladybird'. They meet some American victims of a scam who point the finger at Dalli. When the journalists mention these new accusers to Dalli, he claims that they are also part of Barroso's conspiracy against him. Other accusers are said to have been 'brainwashed'.

By the end of the documentary, the journalists have concluded that 'Maria' is Dalli himself and that the man is, at the very least, half-mad. It's hard to disagree.

“We are simply delighted that the House of Commons has spoken out to
protect the 200,000 children taking up smoking every year in this
country"

Every pack of tobacco is now in plain packaging and those 200,000 children are now 'protected' from seeing an irresistible logo, so I was interested to see the British Medical Association's statement responding to the new Tobacco Control Plan for England yesterday:

'While we are glad to see developing policy such as plain cigarette
packaging and increased taxation on tobacco, it is still worrying that
more than 200,000 children and young people take up smoking...'

So that's nine years of display bans, vending machine bans, tax rises and finally - the jewel in the crown - plain packaging, and the same number of children are taking up smoking as they did before? Is this a junk statistic or an admission of failure?

The government has set an entirely arbitrary target of reducing smoking prevalence to 12 per cent by 2022. It has no way of doing this. Britain is still a nominally free country and people can choose to smoke if they want to, albeit within the constraints of extortionate taxes and a draconian smoking ban.

The government pats itself on the back, saying:

Since the previous Tobacco Control Plan, smoking prevalence has substantially reduced; from
20.2% of adults smoking at the start of the plan [to 15.5%], the lowest level since
records began.

This is certainly a remarkable decline, but the Tobacco Control Plan had nothing to do with it. The lion's share of anti-smoking activity took place between 2007 and 2010 and yet the smoking rate refused to budge until 2013 when e-cigarettes took off.

Insofar as the state can take the credit for the post-2012 decline it is - as I said last year - because they left the free market for vaping alone. That has since changed thanks to the EU and, in a roundabout way, the government admits that it was vaping wot done it in their new plan.

In 2016 it was estimated that 2 million consumers in England had used these products [e-cigarettes] and completely stopped smoking and a further 470,00056 were using them as an aid to stop smoking.

Since there were around 9 million smokers in England in 2012, this means that the vast majority of those have given up in the years since have done so by switching to e-cigarettes.

The government must know that it has zero chance of achieving its new goal without reduced harm products, and it strikes a reasonable tone when discussing them.

PHE recommends that e-cigarette use is not covered by smokefree legislation and should not routinely be included in the requirements of an organisation’s smokefree policy.

Local authorities, football clubs, pub companies and Welsh politicians, please take note.

In addition there has been the development and very recent introduction of novel tobacco products that claim to reduce the harm of smoking. We welcome innovation that will reduce the harms caused by smoking and will evaluate whether products such as novel tobacco products have a role to play in reducing the risk of harm to smokers.

Good stuff. And best of all...

Over the course of this Tobacco Control Plan, the government will review where the UK’s exit from the EU offers us opportunities to re-appraise current regulation to ensure this continues to protect the nation’s health. We will look to identify where we can sensibly deregulate without harming public health or where EU regulations limit our ability to deal with tobacco.

In particular, the government will assess recent legislation such as the Tobacco Products Directive, including as it applies to e-cigarettes, and consider where the UK’s exit provides opportunity to alter the legislative provisions to provide for improved health outcomes within the UK context.

Excellent. The Tobacco Products Directive only came into force eight weeks ago and we are already talking about repealing this dreadful and counter-productive legislation. Because we can.

That's all the Tobacco Control Plan needs to say. It should have been one side of A4 saying that the government is going to encourage a competitive, innovative and low-cost market in reduced harm products for smokers who want to quit. And if you don't want to quit, that's your choice as a sentient adult human being.

Alas, the state can't bring itself to get out of the way and instead throws some bones to the vile prohibitionists at ASH. It lays out its intention to ban smoking inside and outside of all hospitals, mental institutions and prisons. It also intends to tackle the £2.4 billion black market in tobacco while 'maintaining high duty rates to meet the twin objectives of promoting public health objectives and raising revenue'.

At least they're honest about raising revenue, but the consequences of these policies are not hard to predict because we have seen them before. Raising the price of tobacco will incentivise both the sale and purchase of illicit tobacco. It's not rocket science.

Moreover, we know that people ignore bans on smoking outside hospitals. As a consequence there is (a) more secondhand smoke hanging around the entrance, and (b) NHS resources are wasted in a futile attempt to police something that is neither harmful not illegal. If Public Health England were not so pig-headed on this issue, they would rebuild smoking shelters away from the main entrance.

Banning smoking in and around mental hospitals (in which people are effectively incarcerated) causes emotional distress to the patients and will deter smokers from admitting themselves voluntarily.

Are any of these paternalistic bans going to reduce the smoking rate to 12 per cent? Clearly not. The number of people affected is too small and most of them will start smoking again the moment they are free to do so. It is pointless harassment that will cause all sorts of unpleasant externalities that taxpayers will have to foot the bill for.

The policy of pointing at things and banning them has been tested to destruction. The only people who benefit from it are professional prohibitionists who get government grants to lobby against freedom. They have done enough damage. Depart and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

The Guardian has been running a lot of stories about tobacco in the last few days. I'm not sure what the occasion is. Perhaps there is an announcement on the way? [UPDATE: It seems there was!]

I say that they've been writing about tobacco. In fact, they've only been writing about the tobacco industry. For the last twenty years, this has been the only part of the story that really interests journalists. This suits the anti-smoking lobby because it allows them to present their war on people as a war on corporations.

We saw last week that the 'public health' racket would rather not hear from ordinary people, but as a reminder that it is the rights of people that are primarily being infringed by the wowsers, here's a reality check from VapingPoint Liz...

Saturday, 15 July 2017

The Commonwealth Fund is a US think tank that campaigns for
reform to the American healthcare system. In particular, it wants the US
to adopt the kind of universal healthcare coverage that is taken for
granted in Britain and Europe.

Every few years, it puts the healthcare systems of eleven
rich countries into a league table and the USA always come bottom. Fans
of the NHS (may peace be upon it) like these reports because the UK
always come at or near the top. The latest Commonwealth Fund study was
published today and Britain came top again. In your face, Australia!
Suck it up, Sweden!

Of the five criteria included, Britain does well on four of
them. It is only the fifth criterion – health outcomes – that lets us
down. When it comes to avoidable mortality, the NHS (may peace be upon
it) is not so hot and its inability to heal the sick is, as the Guardian admits,’a significant weakness’.

Thursday, 13 July 2017

New Zealand is in the process of repealing its ban on e-cigarettes. In the past year, Finland, Hungary, Sweden, Belgium and Denmark have all legalised the sale of vaping devices and fluids. Every EU country now allows the sale of these products.

Once New Zealand has legalised e-cigarettes, Australia will be the only developed, western nation to have maintained its prohibition. The tide has turned and Australia looks increasingly like a backwater.

Judging by the words of the Australian Medical Association, that's the way they like it. Here's their president speaking yesterday - that's yesterday, please note, not in 2009:

"We must not allow e-cigarettes to become a socially acceptable
alternative to smoking," he said. "E-cigarettes essentially mimic or
normalise the act of smoking."

This antediluvian scaremongering is not taken seriously by those who have looked at the evidence. The Royal College of Physicians, for example, concluded that: 'There is no evidence that either NRT or e-cigarette use has resulted in
renormalisation of smoking.'

The Australian government has recently conducted a public consultation on whether to legalise vape juice that contains nicotine and the prohibitionists are not going down without a fight.

Incredibly, anyone who takes issue with the AMA's claims on Twitter is sent a link to this article from The Age, effectively accusing them of being paid shills for the tobacco and/or e-cigarette industry.

Pretty mature, eh?

So what is this article that is so compelling that it can be tweeted without comment to end any discussion?It was published yesterday and nicely illustrates the retarded mood of the 'public health' lobby down under. It has the fingerprints of the anti-vaping sociologist Simon Chapman all over it.

Tobacco giant Philip Morris is running an under-the-radar campaign to
convince federal politicians to legalise e-cigarettes containing
nicotine, with anti-smoking campaigners accusing the company of using
the same "astroturf" tactics it used in its fight against plain
packaging.

The multinational has been using its offshoot smokers'
rights lobby group - dubbed "I Deserve To Be Heard" - to contact
Australian smokers and vapers and urge them to make submissions to a
parliamentary probe into the use and marketing of e-cigarettes.

If this campaign is going on, it is certainly 'behind the scenes'. Philip Morris's I Deserve to be Heard website hasn't been updated since August 2015 and seems to have been mothballed. It doesn't mention e-cigarettes anywhere.

According to the article, the people who signed up to its mailing list have been sent an e-mail encouraging them to 'make their voices heard' because Australia's vaping laws are 'ridiculous'. This sets the scene for an article which portrays any vaper who has responded to the consultation as a shill for the tobacco.

In fact, lots of groups have been encouraging vapers to respond...

The company's campaign - along with a coordinated push from
Australia's online vaping community - has seen the inquiry inundated
with submissions from people who say vaping has helped them quit smoking
and dramatically improved their health.

The online vaping community has certainly been responding to the consultation. The article mentions Vaper Cafe Australia where there are several threads about it, such as this one which has 230 replies. These are people who 'say vaping has helped them quit smoking
and dramatically improved their health' because that's what happened. Why wouldn't they respond to a consultation about vaping?

While health groups in
Australia and across the globe continue to warn about the potential
risks of nicotine vaping, 107 of the 108 submissions so far loaded on
the inquiry's website are strongly pro-vaping - and the vast majority
follow a similar "personal story" template.

Remember, the most powerful personal submission you can make will be
YOUR STORY. If we can inundate this inquiry with successful quit stories
it will send a strong message.

This is not 'astroturfing'. It is good advice to ordinary e-cigarette users who have been given a rare opportunity to speak truth to power.

World renowned tobacco
control expert [sic] Simon Chapman, an emeritus professor at the University
of Sydney, said Philip Morris and other interest groups were
"astroturfing" - trying to create the illusion of a big grass-roots
pro-vaping movement that does not really exist.

This is a characteristically dishonest comment from Chapman. For the vapers who have responded to be 'astroturfing', they would have to (a) not be real vapers, and (b) be paid. There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case.

On the contrary, there quite obviously is a 'big grass-roots pro-vaping movement'. They are legion. They have vape fests, conferences and numerous online forums, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts etc.You can contact them, meet them, speak to them face to face. They have responded to this consultation, giving their names. There are thousands of vaping activists all over the world, not to mention millions of ordinary vapers. They are real and they are - quite rightly - pissed off.

"They've been actively recruiting people to put in submissions,"
Professor Chapmen [sic] told Fairfax Media. "These are exactly the same
tactics they used for plain packaging. They have dusted off the same
software, the same template and just changed the content."

Encouraging stakeholders to respond to a consultation that directly affects them is not a 'tactic'. Unless the consultation is a sham, getting people to respond is exactly what the government wants.

It's pretty obvious what Chapman's real problem is here. He doesn't want the public to respond to consultations because there are more ordinary vapers than there are professional wowsers. The views of e-cigarette users with real stories to tell threaten to crowd out the views of cranks like Chapman with fake stories to tell. You can see how this would be distressing for him.

I don't know how many people are on the I Deserve to be Heard mailing list. Probably not many, although I'll bet Chapman is one of them, hence this pathetic news story. The website is for adult smokers (you have to declare that you're 18
to access it) and focuses on issues that negatively affect consumers of
tobacco in Australia.

It is reasonable to
assume that anyone who bothered to visit the website when it was set up a few years ago was more committed to smoking than the average punter. Those who signed up to its
mailing list would have been keener still. If
some of these hardcore smokers have subsequently started vaping and quit
smoking - despite Australia's ridiculous prohibition - it kinda
suggests that vaping works, wouldn't you say?

Chapman's message to smokers and vapers alike is simple: You don't deserve to be heard and if you try to make yourself heard, you will be slandered, belittled and dehumanised by professional prohibitionists who have friends in the media.

Now that is what you call a 'tactic' - and it is losing its power. Australia cannot insulate itself from the rest of the developed world forever. The glaring success of vaping in getting large numbers of smokers off cigarettes cannot be ignored indefinitely. Whatever Australia chooses to do with e-cigarettes will not stop vaping being a success in other countries. Chanting the words 'big tobacco' over and over again will not change that. Describing vapers as 'astroturfers' and 'trolls' will not disguise the fact that e-cigarettes have the support of many respected doctors and medical organisations. The magic words are losing their power. The trick is getting old. The spell is wearing off.

Tuesday, 11 July 2017

The latest gormless idea from 'public health' appeared in the newspapers over the weekend.

The plan is to take the
red, amber and green ‘traffic-lights’ system commonly used on food
packaging one step further and grade the full contents of a basket or
trolley for calories, sugar, fat, saturated fat and salt, then print the
results on the receipt.

By the time it had reached the Guardian, this ruse had been expanded to include financial incentives and subsidies...

“What would be really interesting is if the retailers link it to
algorithms set up for loyalty cards for those who want it,” says Taylor.
“So, if a till receipt shows lots of reds, you might get vouchers to
buy more veg"

'Buy junk food, get free veg' is an incentive to buy junk food, of course, but the workability of the plan doesn't seem have crossed the minds of the something-must-be-done crowd.

I gave a quote to the Mail on Sunday, most of which was published. In full, I said...

This is a hectoring and highly bureaucratic proposal which has the potential to alarm people unnecessarily. The amount of fat and sugar in a shopping trolley is largely irrelevant unless we know how the ingredients are combined and how big the portions are. The idea is almost certainly unworkable in practice, but even in theory it would be crude, inaccurate and unhelpful.

It is worrying how little thought has gone into this proposal (which was devised by someone in the advertising industry). I was initially opposed to traffic light labelling and I still think it is imperfect, but it can be useful in comparing direct substitutes at a glance, eg. two different brands of frozen lasagne.

But it would be useless with whole shopping baskets. The practical problems are insurmountable. For example, how would the purchase of a couple of bottles of cooking oil, which is extremely dense in calories and fats, affect the healthfulness of the basket? How do you decide if a shopping basket is high in calories? By weight? By price? And how does the computer know how many people will be eating the food? It doesn't, of course. It can't.

It's a ridiculous idea, and it is telling how few people in 'public health' have stood up to describe it as such.

Sunday, 9 July 2017

Two very different books were published on June 29th. One is a solid debunking of nutritional fads and junk science. The other is a nutritional fad based on junk science. I have reviewed them both for Spectator Health. Do have a read...The Angry Chef by Anthony Warner

The ban was passed in 2004, but was not toughened up until later. At the time, the Lancet cheered on the self-styled happiest nation in the world, saying: 'That is what we call progress' and predicted that 'the tobacco-free age is just around the corner.'

Bhutan was already considered one of the blue-eyed eyes boys of 'public health' in 2003 and had already received the a WHO commendation as Tobacco Control reported...

Under the vibrant leadership and guidance of the Minister
of Health and Education these campaigns paved the way for a coordinated
and multi-sectoral initiative for tobacco control activities in the
country. His Excellency’s initiatives in the area of tobacco control
have already been recognised by WHO.

'... a thriving black market and significant and increasing tobacco
smuggling… 23.7% of students had used any tobacco products (not limited
to cigarettes) in the last 30 days… tobacco use for adults has not ended
or is even close to ending… cigarette prohibition is instrumental in
encouraging smuggling and black markets… The results of this study
provide an important lesson learned for health practitioners and
advocates considering or advocating, albeit gradual, but total cigarette
ban as a public policy.'

Judging by the media coverage over the weekend, there seems to be two agreed facts. First, that the smoking ban has been bad for pubs. Second, that the real purpose of the ban was to force smokers to quit.

Although coercing smokers into quitting was not the stated intention in 2007, it suits ASH for people to think it was, because their agenda is now overtly paternalistic. They put out a thin document for the anniversary with a few policy proposals, such as banning people from smoking in their own cars when no one else is in them, which obviously cannot be justified on the basis of secondhand smoke.

Whatever scientific fig leaves were used to justify the ban,
it is not difficult to discern the true motives of its advocates and
supporters. Anti-smoking campaigners wanted it because it made life more
difficult for smokers, and a significant number of nonsmokers were
happy with it because they did not like the smell of tobacco smoke. You,
dear reader, may be in the latter camp. If you’re thinking of writing
an angry comment below the line, don’t bother. I’ve heard it all before.
I know you think that smoking is a filthy habit. I know you like the
fact that your clothes no longer ‘smell like an ashtray’ when you come
back from the pub.

All I’m saying is that we didn’t need to make it a criminal
offence to smoke in every single publicly accessible building in the
country just because some people want to wear the same clothes two days
running.

In a liberal society, you can’t go around banning things
just because you don’t like them. But if we’re honest with ourselves,
that is what we did with smoking ten years ago. It normalised coercive
paternalism and validated the tyranny of the majority. This, I would
argue, is the smoking ban’s most pernicious legacy.

About Me

Writer and researcher at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Blogging in a personal capacity.
Author of Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism (2015), The Art of Suppression (2011), The Spirit Level Delusion (2010) and Velvet Glove, Iron Fist (2009).

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."